Another 2019 parent here when has been following your thread for a while- thank you for all the advice!
@minniefan- my D19 and I are on a plane on the way to visit Elon right now! She has a freind whose sister is a freshman and offered to hang out with D and have her sleep in her dorm tonight then the tour tomorrow.
Thought of another one: Don’t get so burned out on application season that you forget about scholarship season. Just when you catch your breath from submitting college apps, scholarship apps are due.
A lot of the scholarship apps required essays that, frankly, my daughter used and re-used for many applications after tweaking. I think she ended up applying for about 20 local and regional scholarships. Look at your place of work, your credit unions, professional organizations - they can be found in unlikely spots. So far she’s nabbed three - including one that is renewable all four years. The biggest one (so far) was from my husband’s former place of employment, which offers nice amounts to the kids of employees and retirees alike.
She had a running list of scholarships and what they required, in terms of a resume, essay, letter of recommendation, transcripts, etc. She triaged her applications. If there was no major work on her part - she could reuse an essay or a letter of recommendation - she applied. A lot could be re-used. If it took a lot of effort (or, frankly, she felt she had no shot at locally) she didn’t feel guilty if she decided not to apply.
A little here, a little there. Before you know it, it adds up.
I have twins who each applied to 14 schools (3 overlapped). It was probably too many but we were casting a wide net for merit money, and they wanted to challenge themselves with a few more reaches than were necessary…but we had the “you never know” mentality.We had a lot of acceptances and together they earned over $1 million in merit money (total over 4 years and obviously from lots of diff schools but doesn’t that sound cool??), but the process/journey was positively exhausting…physically and emotionally. Not a lot I would have done differently but I do have the following advice from our experience…
Good luck to all…SOOOO glad it’s over! Girls will be attending Tulane and Northeastern…and I predict one will transfer because she will miss her sister too much. 
@melvin123 Regarding #2 on your list, visiting and touring is great to show interest in the school. One piece of advice that my D didn’t listen to this year was to take some detailed notes about each school right AFTER the visit. Take 15 minutes in the car on the drive away to list some impressions, details about specific programs, things the tour guide mentioned, unique school traditions, quirky nicknames for buildings, courses, etc., conversation details with your interviewer and other aspects of the school that jump out and might be relevant to your area of interest.
This would have been such helpful info for my D when she was writing supplements that asked “Why XYZ college?” She applied to less than 8 schools, but it was still very difficult to answer these questions with much specificity. They all started to blend together.
@twoinanddone “the TALK” is so important! It needs to happen early and often.
@ClassOf2018P great point about taking notes about the schools immediately after the visit (like when you’re in the car driving away with someone else driving of course!).
We used the college board to identify good fits. Then we watched YouTube college tours to reduce the list even more. Spring break junior year we visited 9 schools and worked in an additional 4-5 during senior year. My D has been waitlisted at her #1. We now question if we should have allowed her to apply ED. (We are full pay). If you can afford to apply ED I would suggest that you do it. We are down to 2 (besides waitlist) and are headed to admitted students day next weekend at one of the 2. Attended the other a few weeks ago. She will commit to one but we are still hoping on the waitlist list school. If admitted there we are ready to commit.
Along with what @bearcatfan said about scholarship apps, I would include honors apps.
It was such a relief that some colleges accepted D into their honors programs without having to make a separate application, and interesting that whether or not they required a separate had absolutely nothing to do with the college’s level of selectivity. The most selective college on D’s list invited her right in while two of the least selective had lengthy honors apps.
My piece of advice is to use the process as an opportunity to learn who your child truly is as opposed to who you might dream or want them to be.
Accepted: Tulane, WF, Maryland, Pitt,Tufts, Emory
Waitlisted: Yale, Penn, Virginia
Denied: Duke, Vanderbilt, UNC
Attending: Tulane
@momtogkc hope you have a wonderful visit! I am in another college forum and one of those families is there today to…such a small world with fewer degrees of separation than we think!
Good luck to all my 2018 peeps with revisits this weekend and to our 2019 and 2020 friends with first time visits!
Thank you all for the congratulations…I look forward to welcoming those of you still in the coaster into the station.llit is a lovely place…even with a few scholarship apps still being written
One more piece of advice for parents/students 2019. If your student does not make use of a digital calendar on his/her smart phone, the time to get started is BEFORE senior year. Good to get into the habit early to schedule important dates for not just big dates like applications due but reminders for smaller items on the to do list such as when to get started on an essay or application, or a school is visiting your city, scholarship deadlines and more… Nothing like a pop up on a smart phone a week before an essay needs to get done! Parents can still gently remind to make sure an important date is coming up, but students need to start owning the process and take responsibility for important deadlines. They are going to need to do it in college anyway!
@homerdog, my advice would be to try not to find “the one” but if ranking schools visited (which some do and some don’t) try to come up with a flexible “top three”. Be prepared for that top three to change throughout the year. That being said, S had a top three and one of them fell off last fall and was replaced. Even having a top three may not stick because you may get surprised by an unexpected stellar merit offer that could shake things up.
On the subject of being able to tell from one visit, a student’s instincts are usually pretty good. S visited a strong contender and was not wowed like some of the others but applied anyway. After getting accepted and revisiting, he still was not wowed :-). On the other hand, a first visit at one school came up with a “it’s just ok” but moved up significantly after a second visit nine months later.
To answer your question-S only applied to one school that he did not visit, which was Stanford. It turned out to be his only rejection :-(. Bottom line, it can be a roller coaster ride so strap in and try to enjoy!
@Nomorelurker I agree with having a flexible “top 3” or so. And to not be surprised for a complete reordering (or reworking) once admissions offers are in. My S’s top 3, during summer tours and through application time, are no longer in his top 3 right now. Everything changed with aid and honors offers, even though S was admitted to all of the original top 3.
Roller coaster indeed!
Been waiting all week for the finalized financial aid award from Ole Miss. Got an email on Monday that he needed to go in and accept it but the portal has been offline all week while financial aid is finalized. Hoping for a couple extra scholarships.
We will be back on this ride in a couple years with DD23. Feels like we are already almost there as she just got her SAT scores back from the 7th grade Duke TIP program. She did very well which has me thinking she might need to consider going for NMF. Any tips?
As for our lessons learned:
I agree with having a top 3 instead of a top choice. DS got laser focused on his top choice and everything else was an afterthought. And now he’s in love with Ole Miss.
I wish I would have had him take the ACT earlier in his junior year or maybe the summer before. If for nothing else to set a baseline. He wasn’t applying to any schools that asked for “all scores” so it would have been helpful to know earlier on what we were looking at.
We were chasing merit so I think we did good with formulating a list early on of schools that gave merit automatically. That has worked out well as we are sitting very close to full tuition and if they ever send out the finalized package maybe we will be slightly over!
The visits with specific departments were so much more informative than the general tour. I still think the tour is worthwhile but secondary to meeting with specific people one on one.
We were very upfront about cost early on. Some of his friends are discovering their dream schools are unaffordable. That’s not fair to the kids. Have the talk early.
S’s NMF award finally showed up in his financial aid portal. The fork is in, and we’re officially done. 
Since we didn’t have a letter directly from the school, and since there was nothing in his portal long after NMFs at other schools had gotten their awards, I confess that I was a tad anxious. If anything was headed in the pear-shaped direction, I wanted ample time for S to switch his allegiance to Texas Tech, or even take a second look at places like Bama (which just added housing for all four years to their newly wonderful NMF package), UNLV, UTD, etc. Since all of that would mean more bureaucracy and more time, well, I was getting worried.
@pantha33m I’ve been trying to keep track of your child’s journey since your intro posts on the 3-3.4 thread, but I lost track for a while… Wow, that is a great list. Congratulations!
DD and I played Hookey today and went to see the largely inappropriate Senior Prom night comedy “Blockers”. It was raunchy and rather pointless, but so very funny (and I am not usually one to find butt & beer jokes funny). it was exactly what we needed, we giggled and laughed until we cried a few times. Prom is in 3 weeks!
@DiotimaDM NOOOOOO Not UNLV!!! 
We are a Nevada Wolfpack household, we bleed Silver and Blue and never ever wear red! :)) [-X
LOL, @SnowflakeDogMom Lobos / Wolfpack, same diff.
As I recall, UNR had a decent NMF deal, too, but I forget the details.
DS has forbidden me from officially announcing – so of course, I’m telling my CC friends – but it looks like he’s decided where he’ll go! I don’t want to name the school because of Fear of the Jinx (FOMO’s second cousin). Okay, I admit this is actually a pre-announcement, but I had to tell someone! And you, my CC friends, are my go-to for college discussions!
He had been accepted to his “dream school” with a very nice FA package (covered full tuition and some R&B), and had been mentally prepared to go there. But last week he was awarded merit at The Other School (p.s. @labegg it’s not Univ. of Washington ). He’d get perks like a designated research mentor, access to scholar facilities, and special courses and advisors. The tipping point came a few days after the merit award, when The Other School gave its FA package. And I say “FA” here means Frankly Astounding and Freakin’ Awesome to this single-income family.
So for the last couple of days DS has been mulling it over. Dream school is better known and has a better reputation for his field of study (engineering). But The Other School is also a very good school though not as well known for engineering, and he likes it for other (ha!) reasons. DH and have I told him to choose the school he wanted and we would make it work financially. I even told him to think about where he wanted to be, without consideration of cost.
But…he told me this morning that he’d “pretty much decided” on The Other School. I think he needs to live with this decision for a bit before he presses the button.
Fingers crossed! 8->