@labegg Just a HS senior, but I have virgin mobile too. If you’re keeping their service, you can still get androids from Best Buy. I think you can still get them from the VM website too if you sign in to your account. It’s not under the main menu but at the bottom right cornor of the account page.
@labegg thank you. I’ll mention it to D at an appropriate time, when it’s least likely that I’ll get an a$$-chewing for talking about college all the time. :))
@sushiritto 'a$$ chewing’made me spit my drink. I SO know where you are coming from. Although in my Ds defense I think I am thinking or talking about college all the time…
@1822mom I also can relate to your D feeling like the essay has to be perfect. My D is the same. Most of the time I am frustrated with her for not moving on this stuff and getting it done. But every now and then I realize that this is really hard for them. Boy not what I expected senior year to be like. Nor what I remember mine being like back in the day
@swtaffy904 Like father like daughter. There are moments, very small windows of opportunity, where we can discuss “college.” But you have deftly insert “college talk” into the conversation at various "entry points,’ after subjects like the homecoming dance, her friend’s football game, or listening to who’s fighting with whom at school.
We do speak and argue about other things like who’s a better shooter, Stephen Curry or Klay Thompson. She’s a Klay fan. I’m a Curry guy. 
Previously, my daughter and I had collaborated on a spreadsheet listing all her due dates and major steps (audition dates, application deadlines, etc.) She was working on stuff each weekend but I was getting nervous that the mountain of stuff was staying the same size. There’s a glut of due dates on Jan 15 and that’s right after finals, and xmas and some travel.
So last week I took the initiative of making a massive to-do list of tiny items. (write first draft of supplement 7. Contact teacher Y about missing class to go to interview K. Prep for interview K. etc.)
So that was about 80 little things.
And then broke it down by weekend and assigned a set of things to each weekend (more things to empty weekends, few to none to busy weekends, the weekend before finals, etc.).
And now it seems doable. She crossed off everything assigned to last weekend. It was 14 things. Most of them were individual emails and following up on things, one or two small writing things.
She and I both feel much better. It’s ok that she hasn’t written the supplements for school X. She knows when she is going to draft them, she knows when she is going to finalize them.
D is wrapping up her very full 24 hour tour experience at ASU Barrett. This is an amazing place for the right student, but D seems to think it’s not the best place for her. She is having a hard time with the climate (as I always do–I’m not a desert person, but I’ve been trying hard to not let my biases show). It gets hot back home in OK but it feels very different, and the unrelenting bright sun here is bothering D. Add in the fact that ASU doesn’t really have the full spectrum of what D thinks she might want to study, and it doesn’t seem to make sense for her.
I asked her what college she is missing today and she said UBC. She’s craving the cool drizzle and green and gray landscape and amazing food. She’s touring USC (Cal) in two weeks, and I have no clue how she’s going to perceive it.
@droppedit Wahooooo!! <:-P Congrats to your daughter!!
If any of you are like me, part of the nonstop talking and thinking about college is a way to prepare myself for the empty nest. I feel like I won’t have much input at all into her life decisions after this year, and I so much want to see her on a path where I think she will thrive.
That’s an interesting way of looking at it, @melvin123. We are getting as much parenting in as possible while we can. =((
@ShrimpBurrito and driving our kids nuts since they are at the stage where they want less parenting, not more!
Yes @melvin123 once again, we are on the same page. I recognize this in myself all the time. I keep telling myself I have to stop because she’ll need to do this stuff without me next year, so she should “practice” now… and yet… :-< :((
Rec’d a packet from College Board today with 8 app fee waivers in it, plus 4 more if S logs in online. Would have been nice to have those back when we applied.
I think they’re specific to S only, or I’d share them. Watch your mailboxes everyone. I bet more of you got these. 
@1822mom , I was nodding my head when you said that you foresee your D’s reachier, essay-heavy schools eventually dropping off the list. I hear you!
My way of coping with her leaving is to start getting together dorm room basics, lol.
I have a couple boxes of stuff that I’ve been picking up on clearance from this year’s back to college sales - a $9 t/txl comforter was my best score.
I’m a list-maker, a planner and a do-er. It’s helping me to focus on something other than thinking I will wake up one day and she won’t be here. :((
Last night I Completed FAFSA for D16 first since she already had FSA ID from last year - it just transferred everything in from last year and asked me if I wanted to changed anything. I Had to create a new password. I Guess it expires after a certain amount of time. I Transferred her dads 2016 tax data using the connection directly to the IRS site and using his FSA ID from last year. Then since I had entered that there were 2 kids in college it asked me if I wanted to transfer the data to another brother or sister and I said yes so it started D18s FAFSA with all of the information already in there and I only had to add her unique info like social security, birthday, schools applying to, etc. it was pretty easy, took less than an hour for the 2 of them combined. This is probably only helpful info for those who already have 1 kid in college though I guess. We are Glad we wrote down all the FSA ids and passwords and put them in a file folder where we could find them from last year. It made it really easy!
@melvin123 I have realized that for me part of the obsession on ‘which college’ is my way of distracting myself from the fact that she is actually going somewhere next year. That and that I want it to be at a place where she is happy and thrives
@bearcatfan that is brilliant to start the dorm shopping now! Although with my luck she will hate everything I buy. Like when she was a toddler and I did a road trip to a Hanna Andersson outlet to load up on adorable clothes only to have her refuse to wear any of them. Turns out she wasn’t an ‘opposite stripes kind of gal’
We’ll probably have to do the FAFSA (and CSS for Ithaca and Fordham) for S18, since he’s applying to mostly private schools. We make to much to get federal aid, but institutional grants are a good possibility.
@swtaffy904 @melvin123 I think you’ve hit on something. S18 seems confident that unless the school is a complete mismatch, he’ll be happy and do just fine, but his parents can’t stop wanting to craft an ideal scenario for him which, as you suggest, may be our attempt to hold onto him once he’s gone…