Keep in mind that those of us who are done or close to it mostly chose no-hassle, no essay, auto-admit safeties. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course, but we had a lot less to do to begin with.
Translation: You’re not behind!
@labegg we toured Auburn on a War Eagle day, don’t know if that’s what you got. But the dorms in the Village were awesome, some of the best we’ve seen. They were suite style with your own bedroom and you shared a bathroom with one other person. So 4 bedrooms and two bathrooms, shared a living room and partial kitchen with a frig and microwave. If you didn’t get to see them, look it up. Hopefully that not the dorms you saw and thought were institution-like. I will say we saw some more traditional ones there that we didn’t like too much. But the village ones were an extra part of the tour, and further from the central part of campus.
We have toured Auburn, Alabama Tuscaloosa, Georgia Tech, Vandy, TN Tech, UVA and William and Mary. We are touring MIT and Northeastern tomorrow, RPI, RIT, U Rochester and Case later this week. If anyone has a question, I’m happy to try and answer, not that I will have seen everything.
@ChattaChia Oh my goodness, thank you! We did not see the Village just the Quad. They of course mentioned South Donahue, but I figured the chance of getting in there were impossible
I got the impression that the village was an option for freshman. I believe that most non-freshman live off campus. I don’t think Auburn has enough housing for all the students.
Also, a little perk that we found out about while visiting University of Alabama. If you are in the honors college, they have honors housing, that are suite style, like I described for Auburn. However, you can have a car on campus as a freshman, and…wait for it…you get a parking spot in a garage under the dorms. Talk about a cool perk!
Alabama also has a lazy river and water slide pool…
@DiotimaDM Thank you for the Amazon rentals advice! I’ll be scurrying around with book orders AFTER my D does her schedule, which is only 2 days before school starts.
@ChattaChia which did your son like better, Alabama or Auburn? Why? And I’d be really interested in hearing what he thinks of Rochester. My D visited some upstate NY schools with my ex and I tried to get them to visit Rochester, but it was just a little too far out of the way. My D’s GC likes that school, though, because it has a lot of research opportunities. Have you been finding out much information on the schools’ individual CE/CS programs? My D was interested in Barnard, but took it off her list when a student at Columbia (Barnard is a part of Columbia) told her that their CS program is in complete disarray. Too many kids are interested, so they just went on a Prof hiring spree, but even still kids are shut out of classes all the time. She is rethinking putting Barnard back on the list if Columbia seems to be on the right track (will know more in a couple of months), because she’s heard that a lot of schools have this same kind of issue. Also, did you look at U of AL Huntsville? I haven’t looked at it, but have heard they have a good CS program.
@melvin123 My DS liked Alabama better. To be honest, I thought he’d take one look at the size of the campus (1500 acres) and say no way. But it really is a beautiful, large, sprawling campus. Tons of trees and grass. Great buildings. Oh my, you should see the frat and sorority houses, mansions! Bigger than mansions, haha. We were shocked. As big as it is, they have several quads, which make the size less of an issue. Generally, you will have your classes in a particular quad by major.
We did tour engineering at Alabama and talk with a professor who was pretty awesome, so down to earth. Really talked about what college is about and getting involved. We were supposed to see CS, which is actually in a different building, a new building. Somehow, the student tour guide, thought we were supposed to tour with him, even though I told him we weren’t supposed to tour for another hour. He said it changed and we went. Well then the college called me and asked if we still planned to tour. That’s when we realized that things got messed up. By then it was to late to fix it.
The thing with Auburn is that the tour was so plain. There was nothing about the fields we were interested in. We didn’t go into any buildings except dorms and the student center where the War Eagle day was held. We also didn’t get specific info from departments. The campus is nice, compact, and we didn’t rule it out, but if he applies, we’d probably need to revisit to talk to and see the department. He is leaning towards CS, but computer engineering or a double major with both is not off the table.
As for CE/CS programs, some yes and some no. I posted about my quandary with comparing schools without equivalent info. So GT and Vandy did pretty good jobs of including major info on their tour days. Alabama set up our entire day via the engineering school. tN Tech, we did get to meet with an professor, it was good, he answered questions. What my son really liked was thei iCube. Talk about cool…it is basically a business on campus run by students. Students can work there doing programming, writing, etc. and it’s a 3-D virtual reality lab with lots of bells and whistles. DS was really impressed with that.
We have a good day set up at Rochester., including a separate engineering tour. Same at RIT and I think RPI. So what I’ve learned is that you need to reach out and ask for that. We aren’t getting anything special at Case, so I hope they’ve incorporated the tech info into the tour day. Again, Case was an invitation for a half day program, like Vandy pre-VU days. I will report back.
As for UAH, we live about 90 minutes from there. They are surrounded by industry. Interestingly, I took 12 credit hours there when I was in college and cooping near there. It was a decent school, but I went at night and had adjunct professors. With the huge space industry, they may have a lot of adjuncts. That can be good and bad. Good to have real world experience, which I think makes them better teachers, but bad sometimes when it’s a side gig, which it would always be for adjuncts. Depends how they consider the work and the personality of the professor. Red stone Arsenal is right by there and I think that’s where many teachers come from. Huntsville is a really nice place, very techs. I attended in the early 90’s, so a lot may have changed.
One other thing I am learning about CS is that a school can have a good program, but be very narrow. DS hasn’t looked closely at the programs. I told him he needs to, since if he wanted a particular thing like, cyber security, some schools don’t have it. GT by far had the best laid out program we’ve seen.
I would like to expand on DiotimaDM’s post about not being behind…sometimes getting in done early backfires. We just got notification from Ole Miss that we will need to resubmit transcripts because they want one that list 12th grade courses and DD’s won’t reflect that until the end of the first 9 weeks,
And I already mentioned DD may have gotten her USCe app completed, only now she doesn’t want to go there…
Patience is a virtue is a maxim that I need to learn!
So I had been recycling all the unsolicited college mail lately, per S’s request. But then he got a letter from Tulsa offering to waive the application fee if he fills out part 1 of the application (just the basics, no essay yet) by October 15. There’s no waiver code or anything though, so I suspect this is marketing similar to Tulane that makes it seem special and personalized (using S’s name, saying his achievements have “caught the eye of the Golden Hurricane”) but really there probably is no fee for anyone to apply right now. Regardless, I didn’t want to throw away $50 without checking so I asked S if I should recycle like the other stuff or if he wanted me to set it aside for now. He asked me to set it aside, and he hasn’t gotten rid of it yet. I’m not sure if he’s really thinking he might still apply there or if he’s just not quite ready to declare his college application process complete. Or if he’s just forgotten to recycle the letter.
@rwmannesq I know it is so confusing. One thing that should give you some peace is that your DS school sends in the transcripts so that is on them to do or at least that is the way it worked for my son. Your DS will send his test scores, if he is applying ED/EA you want to make sure they have the score in time enough to make a decision. It also isn’t helpful that each school has their own dates. It should be universal so there aren’t so many questions. Good Luck!!
News (rumor) flash:
D just heard from a peer, a likely NMSF, that ASU will be scaling back their NMF benefits. I don’t know who he heard this info from or how reliable it is, but I’ll be watching their website closely. Or maybe I should just email the AO I’ve been in contact with. (Edit: I just emailed her. I’ll let you all know what I find out.) We’ve already booked flights to Phoenix to tour ASU this fall. Luckily it’s Southwest, so we can easily change the flight if we need to.
I just added on a day to our TX trip so we can do a campus tour at Rice. My “No way I’m going to Texas” girl has done a 180. This will be an interesting road trip! We leave tomorrow.
@ShrimpBurrito Ugh! Thank you for letting us know. The trimming of NMF packages has me worried.
crossing fingers and whispering "no whammies under my breath*
@traveler98 We got a similar offer from Tulsa by email. DS said he was going to go ahead and do it as a “may as well” but it’s on a lower priority than the others that still.need.to.get.done.
We did make progress last night. Texas Tech app is complete just need to hit the submit button and pay the $$. He needs to polish the essays a bit first. And I think one might be too long. He’s assured admission and the essays are optional but I understand they can factor into scholarships?
Bama scholarship app was submitted last night.
Next up is Ole Miss. Relooking at the scholarships for Ole Miss and we might do a 2nd visit there. When we went the first time we did the campus tour and met with the honors college. DS is in the minority here because he was kind of put off by the honors college but overall was happy with the school. We met with an engineering professor but never got to tour any of the engineering dept or labs or the CME. If we go back that will be our focus.
2018 Son has spent the morning in his room working (I thought) on Common App writing prompts.
He emerged a few minutes ago excitedly telling me about the “$600 car” he found on Craigslist (I had no idea car shopping was even on the horizon).
“It’s a 2008 Camry, Mom, with only 23,000 miles on it! The lady said it was her son’s and he died and it makes her sad to keep it. It’s in perfect condition! He only drove it to school and church.”
My eyebrows practically disappeared into my hairline.
Upon further research, it transpires this is a common CL hoax, the $600-car-which-belonged-to-[insert tragically deceased relative here].
Son was crestfallen, but is now wiser.
Also: no essays were written this morning. ARG.
^^^ OMG! That’s hilarious!
@ChattaChia thanks so much for your great descriptions of UA/Auburn. I’ve been trying to get my D to apply, and was hoping the lure of a private room, sharing a bathroom with only one other kid, and being able to keep a car on campus would act as a sufficient lure, but that’s not going to happen.
Sorry @melvin123 I am likely going to play the mom card on some schools. I feel like seeking merit, we have to. DS is not refusing anything yet. We are at MIT right now about to tour. I’m hoping to get some real input after this week. We will have toured 13 schools, surely he’ll have an opinion.
By the way, for a full merit school I’m tossing in a new car, have you tried that?? Haha. It would be cheaper than tuition at most of these high ranked schools.
LOL @HeliMom74 I can see something like that happening in my house. :))
Progress has been made around here in that we’ve got a list! D & I went to the CTCL fair over the weekend, it went about how I expected. D doesn’t have much to say to the reps, but is willing to listen to them sell their school and happy to pick up pretty brochures which she likes to look at better than websites (for some reason). She was satisfied with what we saw/heard. Then we sat down and talked about her list and got it streamlined to 10 schools including 2 academic/financial safeties.
They are:
Agnes Scott College
Beloit College
Chapman University
Occidental College
Univ of Puget Sound
Univ of Redlands
Whittier College
Willamette University
UC Riverside (safety)
Northern Arizona University (safety)
I love this list. I think it suits her very well. Only 4 are “fly-away” (but I would happily cry my way through that flight as I think they have a lot to offer). All but one have acceptance rates over 60%, in some cases well over. Occidental is her reach with an acceptance rate in the 40s, and uncertain merit. And she is at or above 75th percentile for all because we are looking for Big MAC, as they used to say on the 2017 thread 
(Merit Aid College) I’ve run NPCs on most, and those that predict merit aid do tend to give her enough, but always with the not guaranteed caveat. Most have EA which we will take advantage of and I told her she’ll know by Christmas on a lot of these. That made her happy.
#:-S
Now we move on to the essay…
Great news @1822mom, and that’s a nice, thoughtful list. I’m hoping that after seeing a bunch of schools on this TX trip, D will have a good sense of what she really wants and she can nail down a concrete list too. Right now I think what she really wants is options.
@melvin123 @ChattaChia
We bribe. Absolutely. We tell D that the less we spend on tuition, the more money we have available for an upgraded dorm, nice apartment, study abroad, a car, or even grad school. The catch we’re running into is that the cheapest schools she likes are the furthest away.
Speaking of college mail, ours has completely stopped. We haven’t gotten anything in at least a week, maybe two. I kinda like looking at the pretty brochures. ;))
I got a prompt response from my contact at ASU. She hasn’t heard about any changes to the NMF program, but she’s going to ask around to be sure.
@DiotimaDM Surely if your S takes a gap year, the conditions under which he was accepted at UNM would still apply, even if they changed their NMF benefits during that year, right? I’d get it in writing, as I’m sure you will.
@TexasMom18, Love, Love, Love your new avatar. I live where the star is!
@ChattaChia , a new car has been mentioned to S18 more than once. But I know what will happen, the “reachiest” school that S18 will get into, that he will decide he loves, will magically figure out just how much merit aid is necessary to woo us, such that we will end up spending as much as we can possibly afford. That is what happened with D15, and I can see a sequel in the works. X_X