@ninakatarina Yikes. I hope that teacher is qualified to teach those classes! Having a long term sub has not worked very well for us in the past.
S19’s list is sort of shifting over here. I always had Wisconsin as a safety for him but yesterday UW came up and he said it’s too big and he definitely does not see himself there. They have an honors program but not an honors college. It’s just not that easy to make that particular big school seem smaller. I also took one LAC off of the list after a lot of research because it’s just missing some of the things that are important to him. And now I’m considering taking Wake Forest off.
Wake was originally on the list for it’s high ranking for undergraduate teaching, small class sizes, location (warm!), and that possibility of merit. S19 has been talking more and more about wanting socioeconomic diversity in a campus (read-don’t want country club) and I’m afraid Wake is that. Plus, the Greek system rules the social life. I started looking into that more and it seems that Wake doesn’t have much to do for the kids on the weekends and the main thing to do is head off campus to fraternity parties. And most kids drive or Uber to them. Not exactly the community LAC feeling he’s going for. Plus, the campus and local police seem to have an adversarial relationship with the African American students. The latest news of a murder on campus might just be the kicker.
We are still planning on hitting Davidson and William and Mary in March but now it looks like we will have more family time on the trip than planned. Not a bad thing.
I’m a little worried about Wisconsin falling off. I think he likes his LAC safeties but I also think we may need to add a few more schools to the list now that’s its shrunk. Maybe Rochester? Maybe Lafayette? Maybe Wooster? Ugh. All of his schools but two have acceptance rates below 30%. With his scores and grades, they should all be matches not reaches but you just never know with the holistic process. I’m considering even taking him to Dickinson (one of his two safeties) to make sure he likes it. He likes it on paper for sure and met with the rep at his high school and liked him as well. Not super easy for us to get there and I’d have to decide if we’d go out to PA to just see Dickinson or make a weekend trip of it and see Haverford and/or Lafayette too.
Maybe I’m nuts. Perhaps we should just wait until after acceptances and then visit schools he’s still considering. I feel like we are running out of time to see schools with kids on campus. Winter track/track has started and goes to the end of most colleges’ spring semesters. I can’t imagine getting to campuses this fall will be an easy feat either with XC and his other commitments.
Do all of your kids have a school they’ve visited where they will likely be admitted and would be happy to attend?
@RightCoaster@Momto2girls I agree with the issue of time constraints! S19 wanted to do Sci Olympiad freshman year but, with soccer, it wouldn’t have worked. Now, with XC/track, NOTHING else works. He’s had to make concessions when it comes to his other ECs. He’s chosen a few clubs at school that he likes that meet in the mornings or weekends but the stuff he was really interested in (Sci Olympiad, Model UN, Debate) are all big time commitments and have no athletes on the teams because of the conflicts. Too bad. That’s one of the reasons he wants a small college…so he can easily get involved in things that interest him.
@homerdog I think it’s fine not to visit schools before applying. You. can see a lot of stuff about schools on Youtube.
See if there are any college fairs nearby or find out who the local admissions rep is and he can send an email to express his interest and just let them know he won’t be able to visit due to time/distance/schedule etc.
My son17 also originally wanted a smaller campus, but in the end decided to go to a large urban school NEU, and it was rather unexpected. He liked it when we first toured it, but there are a few other local schools that I think he liked better. But he ended up thing the co-op plan and travel abroad combined with a chance to meet people from diverse backgrounds was better for him. I think it will be good for him in the long run too. If he went to the smaller school it would be like continuing high school for him, and not really pushing him out of his comfort zone.
Maybe your son could try a camp or something at a bigger school this summer to see if he hates it, or maybe changes his mind.
My son19 has multiple schools on his list where he would go if he got in and had to go. I’d say RPI,WPI, UVM, UMass.
I don’t know if those are his favorites, but he’d go without complaining about them.
@homerdog My kid has visited one school. He is very likely to be admitted, it may or may not be affordable (he has the ACT score for merit but they may not forgive a few Bs), and he has no idea what he wants to major in, so the school may or may not be a good fit or may or may not admit him to his eventual major. He has spoken fewer than 10 words about the campus visit. That’s where we are in this process at the moment. I have a couple of safeties in mind, but no visits yet.
It’s still early! You and your son are much further along than most at this stage. I think at least one visit to a safety is probably a good idea - would Lafayette also be a safety for him? I don’t know, I grew up in south central PA and can’t imagine taking a trip just to go to Carlisle (granted, I haven’t been there in 25 years).
Racial, gender and socioeconomic diversity are very important to my kid too. A couple of his match schools are very white and I suspect he might dump one of them when he sees the statistics for just how white they are.
But his list is already reach-heavy so I’m reluctant to point that out and have him dump an otherwise fine institution.
On the other hand, it could shake his complacency if he had to confront the choice in reality rather than abstract. Does he even apply to (College A) even though they’re over 80% white because they fit all of his other criteria, or is this a firm line in the sand which he will not cross?
Son19 has been able to participate in varsity soccer and varsity track, big contributor to robotics team, he’s on the math team, he does Model UN, and this year tried DECA. He also plays on a regional club soccer team which is a pain in the neck.
Most of his clubs meet right after school for one hour. He goes as long as he can make it. Then he heads over to his sports. Robotics mostly meets at nights, every Friday night. So instead of hanging out with friends he goes to robotics. Robotics also has meeting over the weekends, and events on weekends too.
The poor dude does not have much free time. He likes to stay involved though and he never complains about it. He is usually relieved when he gets a day or 2 of down time. He just sits on his phone and computer and chills out playing some games. He tries to go out to breakfast or dinner with his friends 1x per week.
@RightCoaster I appreciate your story about your older son and I think that’s why I want to keep options open for S19 with maybe one of two bigger schools in case he feels differently in a year. He’s been to XC summer camp at Wisconsin and UIUC and just says “too big”. I think he’s going back to Wisconsin again for that camp this summer so maybe I’ll force him to go on a tour with us after the camp is over and we’re up there to pick him up. He’s maybe applying to Kenyon’s Young Writers Workshop. Hard to get in but, if he does, then he’ll certainly get a taste of small town college.
@eh1234 I don’t think Lafayette is a safety for anyone. It’s another school where he’d be in the top 25% but it has a low-ish acceptance rate. I know my reasoning is wrong, but if his list is full of schools like this, I feel myself adding more of them to increase his chances of having more acceptances to choose from. Statistically I get that the plan doesn’t help him get into more schools. It just makes me feel better. Won’t make him feel better, though, when he has a bazillion supplements to write.
@RightCoaster the robotics kids at my d’s school become immersed in robotics. Most weeknights, especially during build season but not only then, they meet. They also meet a lot of weekends. My d suspects they aren’t really working on robotics the majority of the time (hanging out really, aside from eating and doing homework together). They also do quite a few competitions that require travel. Additionally, build season starts just as SciOly is really heating up so even if the kids weren’t over doing their robotics meetings, it wouldn’t work for her.
@RightCoaster That’s terrific that so many activities have worked out for your son. I try to remind S19 that his “downtime” are his practices and his club meetings. They are supposed to be fun. Very little true downtime over here as well. I don’t worry about S19 being hooked on his phone or any other electronics as there’s just no time for that. When I find him scrolling through his Instragram, it’s all posts of cute dogs. No joke. That’s who he follows and he says it’s relaxing to see all of the cute pups.
@mom2twogirls the robotics season is crazy here too. The kids meet all the time during build season. Son19 can’t make every event, so his mentor understands that and the work on a schedule for him. He stays late on Friday and early on weekends, and then does some work from home. He is the CAD guy, so he doesn’t always have to be there.
I wouldn’t say he is totally " immersed" in robotics though. There are other kids in the club where it’s really the only thing they do, It’s the only group that they are part of and feel it’s " their tribe". My son is a weird mix of athlete and nerd and he balances the two as best he can. He gets along with both groups and doesn’t think one group of kids is " cooler" than the others. I think the robotics kid think of him like an outlier tough, as he is a varsity athlete and not many in the group participate in sports- it’s hard for them to relate. Then when he is with his " jock group". he doesn’t relate to them when they talk about fantasy football and the latest sporting news. He doesn’t care about that stuff much. Fortunately he has a good friend that he plays sports with that is very academically motivated and they relate to " the grind". They are best friends and help each other through the tough times.
@RightCoaster OMG. Our sons are very similar. He’s always walking the line between sporty kid and smart kid and there just aren’t many kids who fit that exact mold even at our giant high school. He generally thinks the sporty kids talk too much about stuff that doesn’t matter (gossip, popularity, girls, etc) and the smart kids only want to play video games during their downtime. I want to say his opinions are a vast generalization but, honestly, in his experience they are pretty true. He’s part of both groups but maybe doesn’t feel 100% part of either. I think that’s why he liked places like Kenyon and Carleton where many of the kids seem smart and sporty.
As for visiting safeties, or waiting until acceptances come in, I feel like a school cannot be a true safety unless it’s been visited. I’ve heard too many stories of kids picking an ED school, visiting right before that app is due, and not liking the school. Then, they have to change their plan and not apply ED. I would not want for S19 to have the choice of a few safeties come March 2019 and then he’s not happy with them when he visits for accepted student days. I’m certainly ok with him having schools on the list we haven’t visited but he will need at least two schools he’s sure about where he’s got a very good chance of acceptance.
I’m a huge fan of visiting schools in general, obviously including safeties. There have been a few that look PERFECT on paper, and then quickly come off the list once we see it. I don’t want to spend money applying to a school that would be in that category- so I’m glad to get it off the list beforehand.
That’s why my son sort of liked Tufts. He liked it because they have some good sports stuff going on, but that there were other types of kids there with varied interests. The only thing he didn’t care for there was the very in your face " feminists" as he described. He’s not against their protests or disagrees or anything, he just doesn’t like to be very vocal about taking a stand. He says at their high school there is a very active feminist population that are very outspoken and he’s in class with a lot of them and it disrupts things and detracts from learning. He really doesn’t like that. He just wants to go to school, learn, work on stuff and have some fun.
He would be more of LAC kind of guy if it wasn’t for the fact he wants engineering so much. That is why I think he might like a school like U Rochester or something like that. I just don’t know. He said he’d be happy at WPI and RPI too, and I think he’d do ok there. He’d probably find some kids with similar interests.
Popping over as first time parent from 2018 thread to share what I have learned so far this cycle. You all are so far ahead in this process as we found just CC fall of senior year.
This year we are hearing that some safeties are matches and matches are reaches either for admission or finances or both. Because my kid didn’t want be a plane ride away, we were fortunate to visit all schools under consideration and keep applications down to 8. This number still seems like a lot when there are portals to check, and individual scholarship essays to write. I was also very naive about merit money especially when it comes to testing. Fundamentally, I think it’s better to base selection criterion on a 4 year GPA reflecting academic rigor and consistent performance vs a 1 day snapshot from ACT or SAT. I was wrong; when it comes to merit or certain scholarships a point or two does make a difference.
Bottom line is you know your kid. You know if they can manage 15 applications or a couple successfully. If your kid is looking for merit or honors, double check the numbers and plan testing accordingly (whichever test is best for your kid or subject test requirements).
Get some things done over junior summer especially if your kid has fall sport, music, Nutcracker etc!
The common ap essays are pretty similar year to year or getting general ideas down as someone suggested will alleviate some senior stress.
Even getting a rolling admission ap in early is helpful (UPitt opened end of July and having an admission in September or October can be a nice boost)
Have the financial chat before you start, how much debt, do they want to attend grad school, are you willing to leave 100k merit on the table for greater “prestige”?
Our goal in this process was to have 2 or 3 affordable options that the kid can see themselves attending.
So far 4 admissions with and without merit $, 1 EA deferral, 3 reaches RD…
Thanks for listening, hope it helps!
Oh yeah, regarding the schools like Tufts, URochester I doubt son would get in anyways, as he needs to improve his test scores a little bit. He’d have to get recruited for a sport to help his chances.
So I don’t even know if he’ll apply to any schools like that. Tufts is so hard to get into for MA residents as it is, very very low acceptance rate. The only kids from our school that have gotten in there have been kids with super stellar stats Class Pres types. Or a few athletes here and there. Otherwise zero chance.
I might show Rochester’s audio and music engineering program to S19, but Naviance makes admissions look very random. That, and i think we could only afford to send him for 3 years. He may not apply to any reaches, but if he does, I’ll try to get it on the list. I wish there were a similar school that’s cheaper and a little easier to get in to.
Kiddo is now overseas with his school orchestra for the next 9 days so he might come back to find himself with a college list or spreadsheet just because I’ll be a little bored!
@homerdog I think D19 would be OK with attending the state flagship (and I’m pretty sure she’d get in to the honors college). She liked St. Olaf and while I don’t think it’s quite a safety, I think it’s pretty close to one for her given her scores and extracurriculars. Not sure which she’d choose if those were the only 2 she got into, but I think she’d be OK (and we’d be OK, too).
But it’s January junior year, so we’ll see whether other criteria bubble to the surface, though those criteria probably matter much more if you’ve got 7-8 acceptances in hand.
@RightCoaster Well yes. that’s the exact problem. Colleges that could be best fits for S19 are not slam dunks for admission. I’m sticking with preaching that there’s no perfect school. I may be able to convince S19 but I’m not sure I can convince myself. That’s why I keep looking and looking…
