We visited Tuscaloosa, but didn’t get a chance to visit Huntsville. A shame because Huntsville does give more merit aid. But they are 3 hours apart and we couldn’t schedule it. The Birmingham campus is only an hour away from Tuscaloosa, though.
The Tuscaloosa campus is beautiful and, if you arrange an Honors College tour, they’ll do a lot more than the typical “look at how beautiful our campus is” tour. We had extensive interaction with several honors college students and professors. And the suite style dorms were really nice.
@romns116 - Agree completely about not overpressuring - these boards are my outlet, vs pestering S19 with every college thought that runs through my head ;). I’m glad we’ve done some college visiting so I’m able to knock some possibles right out immediately. He doesn’t like an urban campus that’s not self-contained, but has to be close to jobs/internships/coops, has to be affordable for us, and has to have ABET accredited engineering. (That last one is really helpful - I would really go crazy with all the possibilities if he was going for pure sciences or liberal arts.)
I’m glad I’m not alone here, at least, with the overthinking! And like @ninakatarina said, better now than freaking out trying to find alternatives next December!
Also trying not to overpressure here. Kid feels pressure just seeing that I’m on CC. While there’s a very tentative list of colleges to consider, we won’t have anything very concrete probably until the end of the summer. I’m dealing with the uncertainty by continuing to accumulate information so that a list can be put together in short order when the time comes.
Spring break visits, anyone? Soon I need to make some decisions on when and where. It’s impossible to visit all the places I’d like. I wish kid was providing more input as our travel opportunities are somewhat limited until summer. I’m keen on seeing a few that kid knows nothing about, on the off-chance they might strike a fancy.
@gusmahler S19 put in a request to set up a visit with the honors college so hopefully that will all work out. Yes, lots of driving - we ended up booking a flight thru Nashville and will make a big circle over the course of a few days.
I keep thinking I’ve found another place to research, then when I google it, I find I’ve already clicked on the link to that school at some point since it’s purple instead of blue
District Speech Contest was this weekend. DD did One Act and Musical Theatre. She’s going to State in both. However, she decided that as much as she enjoys theater, she does not want to pursue a career in it. It may still remain as a minor and she’d like to be involved in community theater. This is a bit of a relief (if this feeling stays). I thought she had already definitely relegated it to a minor when a couple of weeks ago she announced she still wanted to major in Musical Theatre (and so I promptly went back to researching it!).
She’s in TAG Seminar this semester so she’s planning on using some of that time to research majors and careers. Maybe look into some job shadowing. I know that was helpful to me in HS.
I alternate between worrying that I’m too involved and that I’ve missed something important and must research more.
Part of my worry is not wanting a repeat of D15’s experience. She applied to 5 schools. Sometime after all deadlines had passed and she already had 2 EA deferrals but before RD results came out I discovered CC and realized we had done it ALL WRONG. In the end she had 3 acceptances and a waitlist but because of not enough research having gone into the original list there was really only one option and she wasn’t happy about it. It was a rough spring and a sulky summer until she got to school (UVA) and loves, loves, loves it.
I know that D19 is a different kid. I know that we (okay, me) have done our research. We have visited 5 schools and will visit 3 more in the next couple of weeks. D19 will probably apply to 4 more without actually doing a visit. There is more than one true safety on the list. So far D19 has said after every visit, “I like it. I’ll definitely apply here.” I would be happy to see her go to any of the schools under consideration. So I know that we are in good shape.
But yeah, I still worry a bit. D19’s test scores and course rigor are high but GPA isn’t as high as it should be to match. I’m pretty sure that dynamic will lead to at least a few rejections. I feel like we have to cast a wide net just in case.
I’m not involved in S19’s college search in an yway that he is aware of. As far as he knows, there is basically no college search yet. If he knew how much time I spent thinking about this stuff, he would probably be freaked out. But I’m trying not to pressure him. I just got a sneer when I handed him a piece of college mail, so I guess I’ll back off even further.
Currently, the college search is guided by an ACT score, a hypothetical end-of-junior year GPA that may never materialize, a budget that is moderately limiting, a vague geographical preference that may be flexible, a desire to not take foreign language ever again or any major that requires a ton of reading and writing, something about music? and too many question marks to count. There are some days where I think he should just apply to a couple of big public schools and days where I worry that he will miss out on something if he doesn’t check out other options.
We did a spring break tour in 2017 with our S. Had fun and visited 5 campuses. He kept two on his finalist list to apply to. One was marginally on the visit list and jumped to a “must apply”. Another university kept requesting an interview with him–he declined because it was not a fit for him even though it is a top university. Without a visit, he would not have known–videos were great but didn’t reveal what he experienced.
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On one of those freezing cold days a few weeks back when we were trapped inside, son19 and I sat down and started working on his Common App. Filled out a lot of the questions already. Didn’t talk about any essay stuff with him. We will pay a small sum of $ to an essay consultant we used with son17 to get that started in the summer. Last time the lady really helped my son come up with a interesting topic, and kept him on pace to complete it without us bugging him. It was well worth the $$.
Hm. Is your essay consultant local or online, @RightCoaster ? We have the beginnings of some essays but I think kiddo could use help in expanding them and making them show his personality better. But no hurry.
The kiddo isn’t going to do any of that application stuff except for asking teachers for recommendations until August, which is plenty early to my mind. Anything he writes now is going to be from a different personality than what he will be then. Three more plays, a job, projects, friends graduating, all that’s going to happen between now and then and all of that could change him and help him grow.
I don’t always notice the maturing process day to day, but I thought back to how the kid was last summer and compared it mentally to today and he’s changing so fast! What did I do to deserve such a great kid?
@homerdog I hear you about denial. I am Cleopatra.
@RightCoaster Ha! We have all of S19’s activities and awards written down since freshman year so he can visualize what he’s got going on and so we don’t forget anything. I have a practice common app account and I’ve added schools to the list so I can see their supplements.
We have hired S19’s AP Lang teacher to help write common app and supplemental essays. I’m super excited for S19 to work with him. He’s been helping kids write their essays for eight years now and is really on his game. Has a whole schedule set up for S19 already starting in June to have a 90-minute sit down for brainstorming common app essay ideas. He will probably end up costing between $1000-$1200 but we think it’s worth it. We don’t need a private counselor since I can do that legwork and our GC is pretty good as well. S19 got away with no tutoring for his SAT so we saved money there. His essays will be uber important so I think it’s worth the price.
Of course, I don’t think S19 even knows what a common app is. We haven’t had a meeting with the GC yet. Junior meetings are in March. I figure he’s busy enough and he doesn’t need to know any details until summer.
Ugh - I am so not ready to even look at that link yet!! (but of course you know I won’t be able to help myself…)
@RightCoaster - I do feel like a slacker lately! I started off so gung ho with my research, spreadsheets and college visits and now I feel like I am behind. It is hard when D barely has any parameters on her search yet. I feel like our conversations go like this -
Me - “what about the small schools we looked at?”
D - “umm, I don’t know. They might be too small”
Me - “What about a bigger school like the state flagship?”
D - “Hmm, not sure, probably too big.”
Me - “You saw Syracuse, any interest in a city school?”
D -“I don’t know, I like green spaces”
Me - “Ok, what about a rural school like the ones we visited?”
D -" They seemed too hard to get to, maybe I do like city schools?"
@momtogkc I’ve been slacking a little lately too. I started this big binder with dividers for each school and typed notes from our visits, photocopied Fiske Guide reviews, and any mailings. I made a title page for each school with basic data (how far from home, tuition, number of students, etc.) and I made Top Ten lists for each school listing why the school is on the list. I thought I’d get right back at it once the kids went back to school, but the binder is just sitting there mocking me.
The essay consultant we used is a local woman and she was great. She meets with the kids in person several times and is a good “project manager”. We told her when we’d like the essays to be finished by and she pushed son17 along to get them done.
It was fairly cheap, for what we got, maybe $350 or something like that.
We didn’t use a counselor fo help with admissions or anything like that. Son17 was not aiming for super top tier schools. He was also being recruited for lax from a coupe of schools and we had to get transcripts scores and some apps in asap, like July if I remember.
We won’t use any type of counselor for son19 either. We know where he should apply.
My biggest issue is that son19 definitely wants to pursue athletics in college and I need to help with that entire process. It’s not an easy process to figure out and manage.
