Ug, it’s cold in my house since I have the door between my kitchen and garage open, in an attempt to heat the garage and unfreeze my pipes. Who puts pipes in a garage? Then again, since when did AL ever get to TWELVE degrees? All the stores have sold out of space heaters, so I can’t think what else to do. I can’t locate the frozen section, otherwise I’d run a hair dryer on it.
All the schools in our area are closed yesterday and today. But all of my D’s teachers emailed the kids with their homework assignments so everyone is just working from home. With AP classes, the teachers try to stick to a pretty strict schedule to get everything in.
I have been very reluctant to set up any more college visits because of the weather but I went ahead and just scheduled one for later this month since we are going partly in that direction anyway for a scholarship exam.
In the past two years we got a service puppy delivery in February and there’s a chance we might get another one this winter. If that happens, travel will become more difficult.
Since D is still unsure about her choices, we can visit a couple of colleges on this trip. That will leave Easter break open for a final visit or two if she is still undecided.
Re consideration of distance from home, I agree it’s good to have a “distance safety” on the list if at all possible. Of course if you know your local CC is good that can be the ultimate safety net if it comes to that, and each family will have a different comfortable distance range. S’s short list included two schools at about a three-hour drive range, one at an 8-9 hour drive range, and two that involved plane rides and Boston area transit. We’d have been fine with any of those scenarios but did make sure S understood that there would be extremely limited options for weekend home visits for the schools involving plane rides. That wasn’t a deal breaker for him but I do think it was another point in UTD’s favor to know that he could easily get home.
@labegg our school does not report GPA on the report card and they only calculate weighted GPA. You can calculate unweighted yourself but it is tedious.
@labegg your school sounds exactly like ours. It was a mess getting the GPAs we needed for applications. Plus your GC sounds just like ours. Every time I asked more than one question she would answer one and that was it. I am sooo glad I don’t have to deal with her anymore. Houston thing I guess.
S17 went almost 12 hours away and loves it. He took his car and it totally independent. Flew home for Thanksgiving and drove home for Christmas. He wants to stay there for spring break and is looking for a job there in the summer. Not sure when I will see him next. He does really enjoy being away so it was a great decision for him.
@melvin123 - sounds like a good time to cook something low and slow in the oven. You get to have a nice dinner and warm up the house at the same time!
Thanks @2014novamom, great idea! I’m happy to say, keeping the kitchen door open worked.
Yaaaaay @katstat1 !!
@lovespink, my D is thrilled to have an acceptance from McGill, but the game is not over at our house. McGill is her top choice, D says, but UBC is also her top choice, as is USC. :-? I’m not sure how it will all play out.
For the record, per Google Maps, the closest college in contention is 1485 miles from home (489 hour walk :)) ) . D insists on experiencing something completely new and different, and we are completely fine with it.
Glad to see everyone else is also struggling with visit issues (not really! But glad not to be alone). Really, we have 4 weekends free from now until May 1! And he has 10 schools in play! I’m hoping for some scholarship days (1 scheduled, 3-4 pending, I’m not even sure at this point.) Ugh.
Regarding the distance thing, that is a bit of an issue for us. He was sure he wanted to go away, so only applied to one school reasonable drive (Minnesota). And suddenly, Minnesota is a favorite! Which is great, except it is significantly more expensive than some of his other choices as we prioritized merit in applications. So his parents are all “how about going farther away?” Crazy times.
I am going all Beverly Goldberg hearing how far some of your kids are going …
My daughter will end up 2-3 hours away. Close enough in an emergency, not close enough to pop in for an unannounced visit.
Re: distance - I alternate between wishing S could be closer and being pleased and excited about him spreading his wings in new and (sort of) distant lands. I was a foreign exchange student at 16, and I found it incredibly broadening. I hope the same for S even though he’s staying in the US.
Our financial reality pretty much forced S out of state, so I guess I’ve been accepting that slowly and probably unconsciously for at least a year.
My D has strong possibilities ranging from 66 miles away to 2251 miles away. It seems as though merit scholarship is directly proportional to distance away for us! ~:>
She says she is game for going far away but we’ll see when D-Day comes on May 1! Part of me would love her to stay here in California but I also think that college offers a great opportunity for her to get out of her comfort zone and experience something new. More to follow . . .
Re Visits - wrapping them up in February. Revisits - not a chance, no way, no how.
Wow congrats on all the decisions, here’s hoping our CSS made the initial deadline, I wonder where D18 gets waiting til the last minute? My D18 ruled out a plane ride, so schools range in distance from 45min to 7 hours. So far she has 4 acceptances, 1 deferral to RD, and 3 decisions (all reaches) yet to come. Not sure when we will get to revisit schools, she’s seen them all, we have not. D18 has only signed up for one accepted student day so far, with a bus trip to FL for orchestra one weekend, followed by a possible scholarship weekend 6 hours away, not sure I have the heart to make her get back in the car for a family wedding in Charleston the weekend after that.
@bearcatfan I’m loving the Bev Goldberg reference. It’s actually a threat in our house as in “you don’t want us to Goldberg it, do you” usually does the trick.
May 1 deadline suddenly seems much sooner…
Guess I’m out of the loop! I had to google who Beverly Goldberg is.
So nice to see happy news on the thread!Congrats to everyone celebrating acceptances, honors, and decisions!! <:-P
I’ve been pondering this distance thing for my D, and it has always been a thing. I made sure she had close to home schools and close to home financial safeties because I knew her mind would turn that way. Then of course the map shifted on us mid-cycle and “home” isn’t the same place it used to be! So she threw a last minute app at a school in our new state in December after I begged her to, and now, mid-January, she plans to send out another before the 2/1 RD deadline. Not sure when it happened, but at some point in the past week or 2 she decided closer to home is better if she can manage it. Now her favorite school is a 12 hr drive from the new place. Something she decided is totally doable. If that school passes the visit test, we may be done.
I never played the odds game with you guys, but an if I had, what a ride! We are 180 degrees from where we were in August. I would never have guessed it.
As far as visits, I have 2 planned, but one of the schools I planned she has stopped talking about completely. Not sure if she’s taken it off due to distance or not. I need to plan visits to the new schools she added because she’s never seen them. We visit the favorite in February.
@MPT3D I was watching an older Goldbergs and Beverly developed a “Cuddle Calendar” for Erica’s last summer before she went to college. I sat there thinking that was a very good idea :x
I love the Goldbergs!
Any other future empty nesters out there? I’m getting so sad. Practicaly everytime I walk past my kid I find myself throwing my arms around him. He is very nice to put up with it. He will be closer than the other two who are various degrees of “really far,” but he will still be a good day’s drive away. Its going to be a real shock to us. People keep saying we will enjoy the empty nest and that its so nice and relaxing, etc. But lots of people complain about teens and I have always really liked mine, so I’m not believing it yet. I have to keep reminding myself that this is a happy thing, a good thing. I want my kid to graduate and go to college, right?
I’m also looking at an empty nest this fall @stemmmm. S18 is an only child so he’s my first and last to head off to college. I find myself in a strange kind of holding pattern. For the last ten years my volunteer work has been entirely through his schools and activities, and all my current friends are people I met through those volunteer efforts. I can already feel myself mentally separating from these volunteer groups, and once those ties are broken it’s likely I’ll see those friends a lot less than I do now.
After S is settled in college we may downsize to a smaller one-story house from our existing 3300 sf two-story, so I also have a long list of projects for the current house (paint the interior and exterior, replace the carpet, refinish the wood floor that is all scratched from the dogs walking on it, etc) followed by the whole house hunting and moving process. That will keep me busy for a while!
I’m not making any big plans otherwise though. I’m sure I’ll find ways to stay busy, just as I always do.