@labegg - we have the opposite here. My D has never wanted to go too far. We actually pushed her to apply to a few more far-flung schools so she didn’t regret not having some diverse choices. Two of her top choices are actually a 50-60 min drive and her third is a 1 hr flight. Although H thinks she should go further, I’ll be secretly thrilled if she stays close
She’s been accepted to two of her furthest schools and wants to hold off visiting until all her decisions are in. Although she’s keeping things close to the vest, I’ve got a feeling she’s not seriously considering the OOS schools. Fingers crossed for her in-state faves.
S18 is also having second thoughts about 2 schools that are further away. I realized that he was thinking about ease of getting together with his HS friends. We still have to wait for acceptances so we will cross that bridge when we get there.
Trying to get him to try for some scholarships, especially if we can recycle essays. If one application asks for “a 500 word essay” - do you think that means a minimum of 500 or a maximum? Or as close to 500 as possible?
Some of them want 800-1,000 words - not sure if DS can stretch his 650 word common app essay that far!!
Our school district considers college visits excused absences, and will approve up to 5 in advance. That doesn’t mean you’re limited to just 5, just that only 5 will be approved ahead of time. I think the pre-approved route is just used if a trip is going to be multiple days. Usually parents just call the day their kid is going to be absent for a college visit and then it is excused.
Since DD got into her ED school (and has already visited it twice) we will not be going on any visits. She’ll just go to an admitted student day. She’s already agreed to be roommates with a girl she met on a group chat for admitted ED kids so they are going to try to attend the same admitted student day.
We have 13(!) snow days built into the calendar so it would be highly unlikely that we would need to make anything up. And it wouldn’t apply to seniors anyway. That is exactly the situation my DS14 was in 4 years ago – extra days tacked on to the end of the school year that he didn’t have to make up since he was a senior!
wow! @2014novamom at our school juniors are only allowed 2 excussed absences and seniors 2 before May 1st and their is paperwork and forms to be signed and turned in in advance. Seniors can get an extra excussed absence with special permission from AP.
@3scoutsmom Excused absence doesn’t mean excused from schoolwork! So it’s not as if they’re getting away with something LOL. My kids missed 5 days of school once when we went to Asia over winter break and they made me promise not to have them miss that many days in a row again!
One of my girls has been looking only at schools OOS that are about a 7 hours drive, 11.5 hours drive, and 25 hours drive. She made her decision and signed her letter of intent on Friday (she’s a recruited athlete) with the one that is 7 hours from us. I am glad the closest one is the winner. She will be taking a car because she has some medical issues where she will have to have a car to go to medical appointments, grocery shop (she will be waived from the meal plan and have to cook for herself), etc. If she comes home for any short breaks, she will fly, but it will be an hour and a half drive to the airport closest to her school and close to an hour drive to the airport for us to pick her up, so it’s not really much of a time savings really. We will drive out with her and back the first several times the trip is made because she is too new of a driver (she doesn’t actually have her license yet but will soon, but she drives with my husband pretty much daily).
Her twin sister only applied to a school that is about 35 miles away. She will live in the dorms if she gets in there. If she doesn’t get in, she will go to the community college by our house for a year or two and then transfer.
I’m glad that at least one will be close, as it will be a bit of a shock to go from two kids at home to none all at once.
I think most Texas publics follow the 2 excused absences. Fortunately class rank for honors is locked in early April, so if needed we’ll just take the unexcused absences. D has never received the zero for unexcused that’s supposed to be factored into the daily grades, so I’m not sure the rule is effective.
We are only allowed two days also. And we have 6 scholarship weekends. Plus our visits for meeting the coaches and overnights. I see us going over the 2 days easily. But, I told my DD to take her time and find the right fit so we will miss as many days as needed.
Part of S’s love for UNM is that it’s the closest to home. Granted, it’s a 10 huor drive one way, but that’s better than a solid two-day drive to Lubbock.
Flights are fairly cheap to an airport a little over an hour away, or he can take an overnight train. Board the train at 7 pm, wake up the next morning 45 mins from home.
We are in the same boat as @pickledginger with wanting to do some final college visits during spring break. We held spots for two admitted students days that week but won’t decide if we are really going until we see the UC acceptances. We were able to get them back to back since they are across the country, so that is a small help. Unfortunately, his top choices won’t be giving us decisions until April so that does make this tight. So excited to hear from those like @ShrimpBurrito who know where they have landed. We probably won’t be able to say the same until very late in April.
It was lucky that D was able to narrow things down to 3 schools for recruiting visits and we managed to make one trip the week of Thanksgiving. Since we have the whole week off, it gave us early in the week to squeeze in one of the visits before the holiday. The other two visits, she missed a Friday of school for travel and visited with the coaches on the Saturday. Around 12-15+ schools had coaches who were contacting her, so I am glad she really knew what she wanted and we could rule places out without having to visit them all.
Our school is so crazy strict about missed days. She has had a lot of awesome opportunities through golf that have required missing school that they have not given her an excused day for, but others we know in different area school districts have been granted excused days.
We only have two excused absences for college visits and that is only for Juniors/Seniors. We took DD2018 with us on a visit with older sister, filed the paperwork and everything,'they excused DD2016 but not DD2018 even though we specifically visited a school for her too (Loyola too which she actually ended up applying). DD2018 said “I guess only junior/seniors are supposed to be thinking about their future?”. We have known teachers to rearrange test days to accommodate students making college visits/scholarship weekends. Most do not test on Fridays or Mondays in general.
Vent about GC…
Sunday night I sent an email to DD’s GC specifically asking
DD’s current unweighted GPA. Which we needed for a scholarship application that did not ask for an official transcript. We do not have access to unweighted GPA, it is only contained on the official transcript, which we have to request or we have to figure it out on our own.
When current class rank and weighted GPA would be officially updated report cards were posted 1/10/18. (We have access to that on Naviance).
Why GPA is not reported on their report card? (Does anyone else not get GPA, either weighted or unweighted, reported on their report card?)
If there is any point in sending an updated transcript to UT because DD has had a significant up trend in her grades. Not enough to make her auto admit though.
Multiple questions about DD’s Texas graduation endorsement plan.
The the response from GC: “Class rank and GPA will update on February 1st.”.That is it, I asked multiple questions. Uuuggghhhh.
Our snow days are tacked on at the end of the schoolyear, so we won’t know when graduation will be until sometime in the spring when we can reasonably assume we might not have any more snow days.
I think we are done. D posted on twitter that she was going to Purdue. That makes it official, right? There were really only 2 others being considered both pretty far away. Purdue is a great school and I think she will be happy there.
She has a few scholarship apps she is still working on that I think she has a good shot at so I guess not really done, but at least she knows where she is going.
Fingers crossed for her in-state faves.