Thank you so much for the wise advice! You guys really are the best. And so true that it’s tough not to remember that this website is a self-selecting group.
@MomTwo2 , I even appreciate what you said about not applying to a safety where you won’t be happy. D recently dropped one off her list and I’ve been hesitant, but you are right.
Congratulations on Stanford and I applaud your parenting style. It’s great that your son is achieving his dreams while having rejected the notion of choosing things to fill his resume. That’s what I’ve always done too (hence the unchecked boxes on on D’s resume and the unweighted classes if she wanted to take Watercolors and Ceramics).
@kayak24 We knew D wanted to compete for admission at some of the top colleges and depending on the major and what school within, some of the UC’s require or recommend them, especially Cal (Berkeley) and UCLA. So we knew at least 2 subject tests had to be taken. And we’ve sent the scores out to a bunch of schools already and plan to send them out to the rest, if and when, she finishes her other apps.
D also applied, was accepted and completed a 2-week local clinical/medical internship this past summer, which she thoroughly enjoyed. She thinks she wants to be pre-med, but that’s a long road filled with plenty of uncertainty. So we’ll see.
I’ve been AWOL for a week and wow have I missed a lot!! I need to not do that
First big CONGRATS to @AmyBeth68 on the Pitt merit! <:-P <:-P <:-P So excited for your family!! I love reading good news like that!
Big hugs to @MACmiracle 's D as she continues her recovery. I’m sorry it’s been such a long road and I know how frustrating and scary it must be. But, whew on those car repairs! #:-S I’ll keep you all in my thoughts.
Speaking of long roads to recovery, D saw her foot surgeon today for a 5 month follow up. She is still in PT, still has daily pain, but Dr reports that’s normal and she is doing great! He was really happy with her progress. He said she should see a marked improvement over the next month as we come to the 6 month post-surgery mark, and then again at 1 year post-surgery things should be even better! That was all good news, but so hard to hear how very long it takes, and as her mom it’s been hard for me to see her in almost daily pain. But, there is light at the end of the tunnel, and this week she said she has noticed that it seems better than it’s been so there is progress, if incremental!
On the college side, as many here have reported, essays are real problem in this house. She successfully submitted all 6 of her EA apps on time (yay!). All portals have been received and checked that all materials have been received by each school. So we are good there. BUT where we are not good, is on her oh so annoying financial/location safety schools. We made a deal that she would either submit the honors app to NAU(2 essays) by 11/13 or she would apply to UCR (4 essays) by 11/30. Well, she bolted on the first and is now trying to wiggle out of the 2nd. It’s been a real point of conflict. Her argument is that she doesn’t want to go to these schools so why should she devote so much effort to applying to them? A valid point. She should love her safety. Actually, she used to love NAU. But she has recently decided she doesn’t like it anymore and she has never really been on board with UCR. :-??
So, I told her the deal is, she needs a safety and I don’t care which it is. She can pick a CSU if she wants, but the issue has always been that most of them are heavily impacted and you must select a major when you apply. She’s very undecided. Important to note that the CSU app requires no essay. So in the past 2 days she has devoted herself to our local CSU’s website, pouring over the list of majors, trying to decide which would be the best one. She has also taken the lists of majors from every other college she has applied to and started looking over those (she used to turn right away from those lists in fear someone would make her choose). So I guess there’s something positive coming out of this, she is starting to actually think about what her future path might look like. The other positive: she’s driving the bus these days, I’m just the back seat driver occasionally yelling directions. :))
Re: tests and all - S took the SAT once. No ACT. No subject tests. His SAT was also his PSAT for Nat’l Merit purposes, so once he saw that he had a 223 SI and a confirming score at the same time, he declared himself done with testing.
I explained that his score was fine for any of the NMF schools he was considering, but if he wanted to apply to Tulane, the UCs or competitive scholarships such as UNM’s Regents or UTD’s McDermott, he’d need to take the SAT again to get something north of 1500 and take some subject tests.
He considered it for awhile, but once he settled on UNM, he decided he was one-and-done with the SAT.
We’re in CA, and community college dual enrollment has been free at both schools S has attended. I don’t know who actually pays or where the money comes from. Many community colleges here also offer free tuition for local HS grads for their first two years so long as they attend full time immediately after HS and keep a certain GPA. That tends to be philanthropically funded.
unweighted classes: agree!! My kids also took unweighted classes when the topic was of interest. They had friends who avoided anything unweighted, dropping theatre, band, choir, journalism, art classes, etc, because there was not a weighted option. My kids did the opposite - college-level classes and theatre, art and APUSH. It did NOT hurt their college admissions, at all. Where it may catch kids is in scholarship applications, if GPA is all that is considered. Oh well, I’m not going to have a kid limit their experience on the very slim chance of $.
@Kayak24 D did take 3 subject tests. Honestly the only reason we knew anything about them was that after we visited a selective LAC I was looking through one of their booklets when we got home and it listed SAT subject tests as recommended. That was last winter. GC, who I otherwise love, hadn’t mentioned them. I hadn’t found CC yet. I feel like we just stumbled on that and got lucky. As for your D I would NOT eliminate her reach school or scholarship essay. Everyone keeps saying it is ‘lottery’ and seems almost random after a certain point. Let her throw her hat in the ring!
Yay @AmyBeth68!!! If I could have hit the like button many times, I would have. I’m absolutely thrilled for you and your D, since it was so clear how much she wanted that school. Now if AmyBeth could blow some of that good fortune all of our way, wouldn’t that be great?
@1822mom wow it’s been a long road for you, but I’m glad you can see you’re going in the right direction and you’re starting to see some light. It must have been agony to see your child in pain for so long.
Last night I started to look at what colleges my D can go apply to without essays, seriously. This didn’t seem to be a motivating factor yet for her, though. Maybe I need to start using @sushiritto’s prod of humming the McDonalds song, as in, get used to it honey, you’ll be hearing a lot of it at work unless you get going with those essays.
@Kayak24 if you google the name of the school you are interested in plus “common data set”, at the bottom of page 6 of the CDS the college checks whether the SAT Subject Matter tests are required, recommended, or not relevant.
We did not take subject test. Never heard of the mentioned in any of our guidance talks. I would say 50 students or more apply to top colleges but still never stated. All they said was ACT or SAT. Oh well, now I know to look for it with my other two.
@melvin123 The CSU’s don’t require them (essays), how about Cal Poly SLO? Great school, great location near the Pacific Ocean!
D has written a bunch of essays and sometimes you can recycle them with a few tweaks. The problem for me is that I’m D’s “editor-in-chief” and I’m tired of her starting sentences with “It.” :)) But then OTOH, last night she was doing “lambda’s” and “Granger” something or other (MV Calc) at the kitchen table and that was WAY WAY over my head. Literally it was Greek to me. Her math problems are like a page or more long.
@Kayak24 - My D18 took a couple of subject tests. She did well but not stellar (I think a 790 on Math 2 only gives you 75th percentile) so she didn’t submit them for most schools.
She did do an internship last summer at our local state school in BME. We also did a family medical mission trip the past two summers where my daughter was able to assist in the operating room with her dad. That was awesome and I think she may end up pursuing something medical rather than engineering, but time will tell.
I echo what others have said. If your child has an absolute dream school there is no harm in applying. Better than living with the “what ifs”.
@droppedit Depends on the school. Target schools: probably not. Reach schools with super low admissions rates, probably. Any ding makes it easy to pass you over, unfortunately, when you accept <10% of applicants.
This is the meanest of gripes, the smallest of concerns. But still, if I can’t bring it here, where can I. S18 missed a 36 ACT by just one question. He got a 35.25, 35.50 being a 36. I know: boo hoo. But his school has like 8 or 9 36 ACT scorers so far, and they keep making a big deal of them with web site pics and announcements with bios, local newspaper articles, etc… It bugs us both a little, but not enough for him to take it again!
I got cut off again, sorry. I was just saying a 790 is excellent, and that even for the tippy top schools you don’t need perfect scores. I don’t know what the number is. I think I’ve heard anything north of 750 for the tippy tops or north of 700 for tops. What did everyone else hear?
But, there is light at the end of the tunnel, and this week she said she has noticed that it seems better than it’s been so there is progress, if incremental!