@MinnieFan , congratulations on your daughter making a choice. My daughter is currently down to Elon and Rutgers/Mason Gross. Each is for a BFA in dance. She had a wonderful overnight at Elon with a friend who is a current freshman. It was after her BFA audition. She really enjoyed the other students who she met.
I’ve heard someone say the term “safety” should be replaced by “likely.”
It might be semantics, but it takes a school out of “for sure” and makes it “probably.” Nothing is a sure thing.
Since we are all talking about the process, can I just say how much I dislike the Common App essay? It required a huge amount of introspection, and my D really laid her soul bare on it. Because she bared herself, if she had been rejected, I think she would have taken this as a rejection of HER, no matter how much we all talk about percentage chances. I guess the good part is that all this introspection helped her mature considerably, and we talked a lot about how you have to be true to yourself regardless of whether other people (the AOs!) like or accept you. But boy, if your kid goes really personal on the CA essay, it’s very hard.
Interesting point @melvin123 . My D bared her soul as well, and in a possible unflattering way, and I was worried. However, it was in a strong voice & totally genuine. I even advised her to make it more upbeat & she just added that in at the end (“My mom thinks I should make this more upbeat, but…”) Apparently it connected - 8 acceptances, 1 WL, no rejections.
This is a wild process & I’m glad it is winding down!
Don’t apply to too many schools that are only likely to stay on the list if one’s child receives one of the highly coveted competitive scholarships.
We attended two scholarship competitions where D competed against hundreds of the colleges’ best applicants. A third required a special essay to be compared to the other scholarship applicants and fourth required her to be compared to the entire applicant pool. She decided not to compete for a fifth.
It doesn’t sound that bad as I write it… But when those competitions came up, she was either suffering the effects of her concussion; trying to get papers written for her classes, completing projects, or studying for tests; or she was feeling burned out.
My feeling is that it might have better to focus on fewer competitive scholarships and reduce stress.
@GertrudeMcFuzz that cracks me up! “My mom thinks I should make this more upbeat but…” Too funny! I wouldn’t be surprised if that last line really helped.
We went to a medical appointment this week and the specialist wisely told me how good students will do well wherever they go but we, as parents, overthink the college selection.
But that guy told me last time that he is full pay with three kids who are overlapping. He must make $$$$ and never heard about chasing merit.
He also told D not to worry about money and to go somewhere she likes…Do y’all think he’s planning to pay her bills? 
And in a cheery note, H thinks he discovered rotting floorboards under a bathroom floor where there was a leak. I’ve been thinking about how we can be strategic about ripping up our bathroom floors to look for damage. H wants new bathrooms, but I calculate bathroom renovations in terms of how much college that will pay for. And to be honest, I think the problem was likely cause by the previous owners re-doing their bathrooms and not doing it right.
@MACmiracle I think your advice is very sound. And I think it really does sound like a ton of work; in order to have a good shot at the scholarships, the kids have to spend a good amount of time on these essays, and this adds up to a lot of hours. I remember your D traveled some good distances to to to these competitions on specific days which conflicted with some other things she had going on. Applying to colleges alone is a ton of work if your kid is thoughtful about it. Adding on the additional work of the extremely competitive scholarships can end up being a big burden when the kids still have to do well in their classes and keep up with their ECs.
I’ve redone 4 out of 5 bathrooms in the last two years. Total cost for those 4, plus my mom’s mother in law suite in our basement is less than what I will pay for a year’s tuition. Now, the redo of my master bath is another thing but we’re waiting until DD leaves for college before we get started on that.
oh @2014novamom all this talk about renovating has me wanting to downsize! The headaches of home repair/renovation…
@bearcatfan - I think that referring to a school as a “probably” or a “likely” is a smart way to look at it. Nothing is a sure thing these days. A school that seems like a fairly safe bet at application time could cross into reach territory by the time decisions are being made.
Best wishes to all of the 2018 parents and students. We seem to have raised quite an amazing group of kids!
@MACmiracle 100% agree with you on your first point-to not apply to too many schools that you can only afford IF you get their coveted highly-competitive scholarship. 4 out of 9 of S18’s schools were exactly that. I think with his high stats and great resume’ we falsely assumed that he had a great shot at any one of them. Truth be told, we had NO idea how many high stat/great resume’ kids would be thinking the same thing! We were 0/4 for the coveted scholarships and it was a lot of extra work that resulted in 4 NFW. Of course…somebody gets those scholarships and if you don’t try, you’ll never know…but in hindsight I think we would have stuck to 1-2 only if they were his favorites.
A few other bits of advice to add to the already great set.
- Buy the Fiske Guide to Colleges and look at the website Niche when looking for colleges. The college websites and brochures are almost worthless for telling you what student life is like.
- The faster you can narrow down the characteristics of a college (size, location, etc.) the better. One trick is to just have your kid imagine college. What does it look like? Where is it? etc.
- As longtime parents on this thread know, I'm a big believer in visiting first. We visited 22 schools and in the end only applied to 10. Not only do the visits knock out schools, but they also give you something to write about in essays and talk about in interviews.
- I know it's been said before but I see so many sad stories on here about kids not getting in anywhere and I just want to scream BALANCE YOUR LIST. 3 likely schools, 4 targets, 3 reaches. Or thereabouts.
- Do everything that is labeled optional.
@MinnieFan Congrats on decision made
@MACmiracle Ugh…major home repairs…ugh…
@bjkmom Truth! “Make sure there are some real concrete safeties, and apply there early. Those rejections are so much easier to take with some acceptances already under your belt.”
I agree so much with this, with all the upheaval and uncertainty, I know many of us heard our kids say “whew, I KNOW I AM going to college…somewhere”
@melvin123 We are renovating with an eye towards downsizing in a few years. DD is my youngest so we will be empty nesters next year.
Don’t feel like I can contribute to the “what I’ve learned” subthread until S18 makes a decision.
I do think having high exam scores EARLY, certainly before end of junior year, is really helpful.
We are going to an Admitted Student Visit on April break (not the big open house bc it conflicted with our other school). He will get to shadow a student in class, go to lunch, etc. So - what does the parent do? I assume this is for student only but its too far from home to just drop him off. Is it better to wander the campus myself or go find a local Dunkin Donuts to hang out? Does Admissions plan something for parents?
I think it depends on the college @Momma2018. We are going to one on Sunday. There are portions of the day when they students will be doing things like sitting in on a class, etc. I just plan to wander or go to a cafe and do some work. I think they do have a financial aid session for the parents for some of that time.
@MinnieFan Congratulations!!! Elon!
My kid was incredibly busy and stressed junior year/ fall of senior year. I have come to call her IB program 3 semesters of hell. The current 4th semester has been fine. That was the major difficulty we had with the application process – the high amount of stress it added to a schedule that was already maxed out.
I don’t know how to fix that. But here are things that went well that I would do again:
- Prep for testing and do it one and done if possible. My D took several practice tests as part of the 3 weeks she spent prepping and had an idea of how well she was likely to do. We set a goal score, she got it, done in winter of junior year. She probably could have raised it a bit, but it wasn't worth more time and stress.
- No subject tests. None of her schools required it, so we skipped it.
- Not having a clear #1 choice. My D's list had a bunch of schools that she loved basically equally. I'm glad we didn't do ED because we would not have predicted where she ended up getting large merit scholarships. These scholarships changed the shape of which schools are on her final list. I've thought about whether doing ED would have reduced her stress, and I think if she had done it and got in, it would have reduced the stress for the last week or so before the January deadlines, but would not have helped otherwise. And if she'd been rejected/deferred, of course the stress would be higher. And now our costs would almost certainly be higher.
- Applying to a couple "likelys" with EA. She applied to two of these, one a likely that she loved, and one a likely she was ok with and was relatively close to home. Getting in to these schools before the end of 2017 reduced her stress tremendously.
- Having the list finalized by the end of the summer, and the common app essay started. I wish the essay had been finished, but she tried.
- I helped her plan out her to-do list. The number of moving parts and due dates was crazy. Adding to this, she did videos and auditions for music for some of the schools, which was more complex yet (video making, things to schedule, extra recommendations from her voice teacher, a music resume...) At first I left it to her, but she was overwhelmed. So I mapped out things to do and deadlines and assigned items to weekends. She was in charge of actually doing the things, of course, but it helped a lot for her to see that putting one thing off would pile things up later.