Great progress here today as well. FAFSA & CSS Profile are complete & D submitted applications to 6 schools !!
@Astro77 I can’t say with any real authority, and D isn’t using the Coalition App, but on Common App and others, I’ve noted her gpa as on a 4.0 scale and “weighted” since at her school, 4.0 = A. Weighted classes get an extra point when calculating gpa, but since not all classes are weighted, the gpa is on a 4.0 scale. If that makes sense. At least that’s how I’ve thought about it. I could be wrong. :-??
Congrats to everyone on all the successes this weekend!! So exciting to see progress! My D has had some small progress as well this weekend with some shorter essays complete! We’ll take any progress we can get around here. Baby steps…
Same here @DiotimaDM. S18 just completed his NMF essay. Started this morning. Isn’t it supposed to be due today? That’s what our school sent us. S18 will hit the submit button only at 1159pm.
@melvin123 , the original plan was six of us, so with only four of us it’s a little better than it could have been.
It was my idea for the family to do something nice to make up for canceling our family trip plans in August when we had to quarantine our service puppy at home after our family dog got kennel cough.
It would have been very nice if it worked out for us all to go since it’s beautiful and there’s so much outdoor stuff nearby for H to do with the other kids while D18 and I do college stuff, but then the forecast was bad.
D20 has been very cheerful and quiet for the entire day. I guess she’s growing up. Grandma keeps us laughing, in a good way. D18 doesn’t talk much so it really helps to have someone to chat with on the long ride.
We did a little exploring and drove through the campus, and now we’re at the hotel. D18 is doing homework.
Re: NMF deadline - It’s the 11th, but the school might tell students it’s earlier to give the GC extra time, or to make sure nobody misses the real deadline.
@DiotimaDM – any idea how much work the GC has to do on the NMSF application?
Oh! We didn’t know that 11th is the deadline for NMF. Anyways the 8th deadline is working. Or else S wouldn’t have worked on it
Hi I’ve been following this thread for a while but decided to delurk now because I have a question about some SEC schools. For those who have applied, how long does it usually take for them to give an admissions decision? I’ve heard about the people that have had to wait for months and finding out at the last possible day…I would absolutely hate that.
@droppedit I know there’s a recommendation / endorsement, some check box stuff (any discipline issues?, etc), GPA, courses taken and scheduled. Possibly more, but I don’t know for sure.
@verbal572 My DD applied to Alabama and received a decision within two weeks. Many of her friends that have applied to other SEC schools have also received decisions within one to three weeks.
@Astro77, I asked our GC and College Counselor the same question about GPA. Both said that for weighted GPA, it’s out of a 5.0 and not a 4.0. That felt odd to me, but I went with it on the applications and figured the colleges are going to make their own decisions/calculations about GPA once they saw DD’s transcript. It felt like putting a 5 would be unusual because in our county there’s no way students can take all honors/AP classes since required-for-graduation PE classes and introductory Tech and Arts classes are non-honors (so a max grade of 4.0).
DD submitted her first application over 3 weeks ago, and we are still waiting on the HS to send her transcripts and Counselor rec letter, as well as 3 of the 4 teacher recommendations. SAT scores got there in a few days, and one teacher submitted her rec letter. Then DD submitted another application 2 weeks ago and there is no progress on submissions from the school. It’s frustrating because they tell us we need to allow 3 weeks for them to get it all done at the school end of things, but then I think they wait until right before the college EA deadline :(. I plan to email the counselor tomorrow to see if it we can get some things moving.
On an exciting note for DD, she passed her driving test on her first try Friday! She was excited to drive to a few church events, although of course it rained and then some deer were on the roadside. I’m nervous but happy for her 
since it’s a big milestone and sense of independence…not to mention some extra free time for me when I don’t have to shuttle her around.
@charlotte47 whew! thank for the quick reposnse it’s a relief knowing at least a few decisions will most likely be in before Christmas
@Astro77, I looked at my D’s school profile (it was in the envelope with one of her HS transcripts) and it showed that the highest possible unweighted gpa is 4.0 & the highest possible weighted gpa is 4.8.
So, I guess it depends on how the individual school systems calculate GPA.
@gclsports, I hope your red exclamation point eventually went away & you were able to access your common app info. I was doing CSS profile stuff today & that was acting weird today also. I finally gave-up and signed back on several hours later & was able to complete and submit it. Maybe too many people using it at the same time??
So, after working with the CC for two months on the CA essay, husband looks at it tonight before D18 is ready to hit send and says “that’s too vulnerable for an engineering major”. Hide the knives.
I’m right about this, right? I am 100% sure we won’t qualify for need-based aid. D is applying to all small private schools. Every single one of them says
“All first-year applicants are considered for merit-based scholarships. No additional scholarship application is required.”
This means no FAFSA/CSS is required. Right? We are getting the hard sell from the GC that we must do the FAFSA.
@daffodilpetunia some colleges require a FAFSA for their merit aid (then why is it called merit?), but you should be able to look up the colleges your kid is applying to and see if that applies. I think another issue may be that if your circumstances change while your kid is in college and you need to apply for FA later, some colleges won’t let you do this at all, and others won let you if you haven’t filed a FAFSA originally.
I have a question: which income tax year you use for this years senior? My son is a junior this year. Thanks
@daffodilpetunia Having done the FAFSA my opinion is it’s not bad to fill out. You and your child both need FAFSA IDs, which stay the same all four years. You just need some prep work - locating your various assets and printing out the balances as of the day you file. Use the DRT and you are done. For me, it was more the prep work than the actual sitting down and filling it out that took some time. Even then I’m pretty organized so it might have taken less than half an hour to locate and print them.
I’ll echo what @melvin123 said - some schools and other scholarships want to see that student aid report. Maybe they want to see if you’ve done all you can do to get help? Plus, you cannot get federal student loans without filling out a FAFSA. Loans are a personal thing, but I guess I’d rather be eligible and not take them than need them and have to scramble.
And you might be surprised at what you qualify for, especially from the schools themselves. I’d fill it out, and see what happens.
Need opinions and advice, please:
S18 originally put a Java class down for his senior year schedule. Prior to classes beginning the class was yet to be added due to some internal issues in the school so he had to pick another class.
We are now a week away from the first qtr ending and the Java teacher tells him and other students the class is a go.
Here are my questions:
Since his GC already sent out his transcript, does he ask her to resend them out now going into the 2nd qtr? Or just wait until mid-year reports are due? Does he explain going from one class to another mid semester on common app to the schools he’s applying to? Is this a normal occurrence or are schools going to question why the change in the middle of a semester?
He has yet to hit the send button to any schools.
@daffodilpetunia, I’m not filling out the FAFSA. Even if we had a change in circumstance we have a 529 that is fully funded for four years at any in-state public with a bit left over. There’s zero chance we’d get any need-based aid for S’s chosen school (UTD) even if he were to lose his scholarship AND H lost his job, because we have savings outside our retirement accounts and that large 529 balance. Like you I scoured the school’s FA website and found nothing to indicate that the FAFSA is required for merit aid, so why waste my time and put my personal info in yet another hackable online database for nothing? Of course if there were a chance that the FAFSA would be needed for merit aid, or if we were closer to the edge and a change in circumstance during S’s college years would put us into need-based aid territory, I’d go ahead and fill it out. From the comments on CC it doesn’t sound like a difficult process. I mentioned “hackable database” above but it’s probably no worse than any other place I’ve put my financial info (even if the IRS just awarded Equifax a non-competitive contract, yikes).